


as much a lifeline

by marvelthismarvelthat



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: (at least for now), Angst, Canon Compliant, Depression, Grief/Mourning, Team as Family, but with a hopeful/happy ending, mama may, mostly angst, warning in author's note
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-13
Updated: 2019-06-13
Packaged: 2020-05-07 08:11:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19205392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marvelthismarvelthat/pseuds/marvelthismarvelthat
Summary: A week after they land back on Earth, after their months long mission to find Fitz, Daisy takes some leave from SHIELD. With the memory of Coulson’s passing and the turmoil within the team fresh on her mind, she just can’t bear to be in the Lighthouse any longer.So she leaves without looking back, never expecting anyone would follow.





	as much a lifeline

**Author's Note:**

  * For [daisyqiaolianmay (skinman)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skinman/gifts).



> please be aware that this fic deals depression and everything that comes with it--feelings of hopelessness, loneliness, lack of appetite, medications, and a desire to give up. if you feel this will be triggering for you, please steer clear of this fic <3

A week after they land back on Earth, after their months long mission to find Fitz, Daisy all but begs Mack for some leave. Begs him to just give her a few weeks, before she comes back and takes over as Deputy Director in an official capacity.

After so long carrying the weight of the world around and bearing the brunt of the team’s anger, she feels as if she might break if she doesn’t step away. Sure, things are better now, the world’s been saved and the team was slowly moving back toward the friendship that used to come to them so easily. But to Daisy, everything about the Lighthouse feels suffocating.

She’s lucky. Mack looks ready to argue, but takes one look at her and something akin to understanding crosses his face. After a second, he simply nods and asks her where she’s thinking of going.

She doesn’t know.

She hasn’t thought that far.

She just needs to get out before the darkness swallows her whole.

And with Mack’s blessing, that’s just what she does. She packs up her bags, bids a quick farewell to the team, and leaves without so much as a look over her shoulder.

She’ll be back soon enough.

She always is.

-

Eventually she settles in one of Coulson’s safe houses in the middle of Alberta.

She knows she probably shouldn’t be there, not when Coulson’s… no. She can’t go there. She can’t think about it.

She doesn’t think he would’ve cared as long as she was safe.

And with no neighbors for miles on end, she’s as safe as she can be.

She’s safe enough to feel it all.

-

She doesn’t know how much time Coulson spent at this safe house over the years or how much effort he put into decorating it, but there’s something about the place that feels inexplicably like him.

There’s so much Coulson there that the house feels as much like home as the Playground had.

It’s strange, but there’s something so endearingly dad-like about his ability to make even the most mundane of places feel like home that all she can do is smile about it.

She’s forever grateful that he found her in her van that fateful September day.

For all the pain that had followed, she had a family, a father, because of his kindness.

-

The morning after she gets there, she walks out into a field and allows herself to loosen her tenuous hold on her powers for the first time in months.

The ground beneath her trembles ominously for hours as she lets go of her sorrow, ignoring the ache in her bones until every fiber of her being feels exhausted. It’s only then that she walks back into the house, foregoing dinner in favor of standing under the scalding hot shower as long as she can bear to and curling into bed.

-

She’s not proud of it, but after that first day she only leaves the bed when she absolutely needs to.

It’s a mistake to do that, that much she knows, but she can’t bring herself to find the energy to fight the storm brewing in her mind, let alone to make herself move.

As suffocating as the Lighthouse had been, she soon finds out the loneliness is worse.

She’s drowning and she doesn’t know how to reach out for help.

-

After three weeks, May finds her.

Daisy is so deeply asleep that she doesn’t realize someone else is in the house until May’s sitting next to her on the bed and putting a gentle hand on her shoulder.

For a second she’s sure May’s going to berate her for being so careless. Had her SO been an enemy, she would’ve been murdered in her sleep.  

But May just sighs, warily eyeing the bruises on Daisy’s arms, before pulling her boots off and climbing into the other side of the bed. And for the first time since she arrived at the safehouse three weeks before, Daisy cries.

She cries for all she’s lost, for the friendships she might never recover. She cries because her bones ache almost as much as her heart. But mostly, she cries because she’s not alone.

-

The next day Daisy wakes to May gently running a hand over her forehead and murmuring that she needs to wake up.

It takes a few minutes for Daisy to feel like she won’t come unglued at the loving determination in May’s eyes.

May doesn’t push, nor does she say much. But pushing and talking had never been May’s style in the first place.

What she does do is suggest that Daisy shower and eat, so they can go for a walk.

Daisy doesn’t want to, but she does it anyway. She owes May that much.

She has to try.

-

It isn’t until later that day that Daisy can bear to ask about Coulson.

She doesn’t know if she can live with the knowledge of what happened in his final days.

May freezes, her hands hovering over the sandwich she was preparing. For a second Daisy worries she’s going to leave the kitchen, maybe even walk out of the house, but then May’s eyes meet her own.

There’s so much pain there that it takes Daisy’s breath away.

It makes the whole house shake for a beat, before Daisy takes a deep breath and swallows everything she’s feeling.

Her arm snaps with a deafening crack a second later.

-

Jemma shows up mere hours after that, her arms laden with medical equipment.

Daisy can’t begrudge May for calling her. It wasn’t like they could go to a hospital to get her arm set. But she can’t help the feelings that Jemma’s very presence steers up, no matter how hard she tries.

She loves Jemma down to her bones. They’re as close to family as anyone can be.

Yet seeing her tears Daisy’s heart to shreds all over again.

But that doesn’t matter, the last thing Jemma needs is to deal with Daisy’s baggage. So she shuts that away as she watches Jemma methodically fix her arm.

She barely manages to desperately hold it together, because Jemma’s gentle ministrations and the shaky, emotional way she babbles about how much she’s missed her makes Daisy want to crumble to pieces.

Daisy doesn’t miss the way Jemma so very obviously seeks eye contact with her, trying to make some sort of connection with her. But Daisy knows the darkness her friend would see in her, so she prefers to keep her eyes downcast, curling into herself, even as Jemma prepares to leave later that day. It’s easier that way. It hurt less.

It isn’t until Jemma gently hugs her goodbye that Daisy allows herself to shed a tear.

She didn’t understand when it’d all become so hard.

-

Life gets a little easier with May around.

Her very presence makes the crushing loneliness feel less suffocating, and her steadiness is more soothing than anything Daisy’s felt in months.

They don’t talk much, but it doesn’t matter. May somehow manages to _know_ how far Daisy can go in a day.

She knew to make Daisy get up from the bed in the mornings, regardless of how much she wanted to stay in it. She knew the best way to get Daisy to take the antidepressants and anxiety meds Jemma had prescribed was to simply leave them on the bedside table with a cup of water. She knew to offer her breakfast, but to not push her beyond that.

Most of all, she seemed to understand that Daisy needed time. That what she needed more than anything was someone to remind her she was worth fighting for, day in and day out.  It made Daisy feel woefully inadequate. Because May had made it her mission to help Daisy recover, whatever it took, while constantly putting her own pain on the backburner.

And that’s not okay in Daisy’s book. She can easily see that May’s struggling, but every attempt she makes at trying to help May gets shut down curtly. But she doesn’t have it in her to fight back, not when these days even taking a shower feels as hard as climbing a mountain.

So she’s left with no choice but to watch May bury her grief as deep as it could go, wondering how much May could take before she reached her breaking point.

-

It’s a while before May asks her about Coulson’s letter, about what words he’d left for her.

Thinking of the wrinkled, tear-stained letter that she keeps between the box spring and the mattress makes her feel like she’s drowning.

But she tells May about it anyway. Because Daisy owes her whatever part of Coulson she can give her.

And it tears at her heart to do so.

Because the knowledge of how much Coulson loved her is too much to bear now that he’s gone, having taken his love with him.

By the time May sits next to her and wraps an arm around her shoulders, Daisy’s sobbing in earnest and the couch beneath them is shaking in tandem with her cries.

It wasn’t fair. None of it was.

-

Not long after that the team starts sending her letters. They come in every week, usually on a Monday.

She can’t open them, she can barely even look at envelopes. Not with everything that happened. Not with the memory of Coulson’s letter so fresh in her mind.

May doesn’t touch them either.

So they sit on the kitchen island, waiting for the day Daisy’s ready.

She just doesn’t know if that day will ever come.

But it’s a small comfort to know that the team cares, that they’re waiting for her.

It makes it feel like she’s not alone.

-

The next time Jemma visits to check her arm, Fitz comes with her.

Daisy doesn’t do more than take one look at him before the whole house is rattling, the quakes running down to its foundation.

So she runs, far out into the fields in the pouring rain where she won’t risk hurting any of them as she loses control.

The exhaustion catches up to her eventually, and she lowers herself to the ground and cries, the sound of her sobs drowned out by the monsoon coming down on her.

She doesn’t know how long she sits there before May shows up, dropping to her knees behind Daisy and wrapping herself around her.

It’s not long before Daisy realizes that May’s shaking too, her grief finally bubbling to the surface, triggered by whatever she saw in Daisy in that moment.

It’s hours before either of them move.

-

Even after Daisy’s breakdown in the field, it’s weeks before May _really_ lets go.

She’s doing the dishes one afternoon, absently staring out the window whilst Daisy sits at the counter trying to force her meager lunch down her throat, when a mug May had been drying slips from her grasp and shatters against the tile.

It was one of Coulson’s beloved Captain America mugs.

May freezes for a beat before her face crumbles, her body immediately starting to shake with sobs.

Daisy’s paralyzed on the spot. She knew that May had been trying to hold herself together, burying her grief deep beneath the surface.

Because even after losing the man she loved, May wanted to protect _her._ Because protection was what May was best at.

But now here she was, clinging to the kitchen counter as her legs tremble and not even pretending that she isn't falling apart.

And Daisy couldn’t _move_.

She doesn't know how to fix this, she’d never even seen May cry before. Letting other people help wasn’t really May’s thing.

Then again, letting someone suffer alone had never been Daisy’s thing.

So she swallows her discomfort and forces herself off the stool, hesitantly moving closer until she was able to put an awkward hand on May’s shoulder.

It’s all she can do. All she knows to do, and all she has to give in that moment. And Daisy hates herself for it. May would put her back together without a second thought. She’d go the extra mile. So why couldn’t she do the same?

But then May’s shaking hand reaches up to grab hers, gripping her fingers so tightly that it hurts, and Daisy realizes that maybe _this_ is enough.

Maybe she’s as much a lifeline to May as May is to her.

Maybe just being there, trying to help as best she can, is enough.

-

After that things get better. Slowly but surely.

It’s hard to find the surface where there’s seemingly no surface to be found. It’s harder to fight, to pull herself above the water, when all she wants to do is give up and let herself drown. But Daisy’s determined to push herself a little harder every day. To wade through the darkness as quickly as she can manage.

If not for herself or for Coulson, she’d get through this for May. No matter what it took.

May didn’t deserve to lose anyone else.

So Daisy takes her pills, eats every meal May puts in front of her, sluggishly shuffles into the shower in the mornings and washes her hair, goes for however many walks May suggests.

She finally reads the team’s mountain of letters, and cries at the overwhelming amount of love packed into them.

She gets out of bed, even when it feels like it’s impossible.

She even goes to therapy.

The hardest thing is learning how to reach out. How to let go, rather than keeping it all in. But she does it anyway. She makes it a point to. So she starts talking. She tells May when she’s drowning. She tells her when she can’t eat. When she can’t sleep. When she can barely keep her eyes open.

And May _listens._ She never complains or interrupts. She listens, hanging on to Daisy’s every word. Then, when Daisy’s done, she reaches out to grip Daisy’s hand or give her a hug or cup her cheek. Sometimes she even talks back, opening up in ways that Daisy never imagined she would, not to her at least.

It’s somehow always exactly what Daisy needs in that moment.

It’s in moments like those that Daisy wonders if that’s what having a mom feels like.

She’d never had a mom, not really, so she doesn’t really know what it’s like. But it seemed as if this would be what it’d feel like.

For her, it’s in the little things.

She doesn’t miss the way May is more free with her touches, with her words. How she is quick to reach out for a hug when Daisy needs it, letting her keep contact for as long as she wants, and how she was always there with a comforting touch and sage words. It’s in how she lingers close by in case Daisy needs something; in how she checks in on Daisy after she’s gone to bed, pressing a kiss to her forehead and tucking the blankets tighter around her when she thinks Daisy is asleep.

So she might have never known what it’s like to have a mother, but she thinks this is it.

Daisy’s grateful for it. For her.

She didn’t know if she’d still be here without her love.

-

Daisy doesn’t know at what point she finds the surface. Not really anyway.

It feels like one day it’s hard to even breathe, and the next it feels like she’s treading carefully into the land of the living again.

She knows it doesn’t work that way, she knows it’s been a long road to where she is. She knows it’s all the work she’s put in, the hours she’s spent in therapy, all the times she’s made an effort to fight.

And she knows she’s not okay, not by a longshot. She still feels like a shell of the person she was a few years ago. A few months ago, even.

She still feels like she’s hanging on by a thread, on the verge of swaying back into the darkness even on the best of days.

But it doesn’t hurt as much anymore.

Thinking of Coulson still makes her ache, but now she can smile at all the memories she has of him. She can feel thankful that they found each other and that she had him for as long as she did.

Her life would’ve been a lot emptier had it not been for his love, for the family he gave her.

But thinking of the team? That was still so unbelievably hard. She loved them more than she’d ever be able to put into words, but everything had made that love hurt.

What was worse was how empty she felt without them. How lonely she felt even with May here, giving as much of herself as she could to keep Daisy from feeling that way.

Being away had only made her more sure that she’d go back to them eventually. Because she’d never loved anyone like she loved them, and nothing would ever change that.

They felt the same way, their letters had made that clear.

She just needed time to heal.

But she’d get there, no matter what it took.

-

Eventually they go back to SHIELD.

It takes them months and months to, but they make it back.

May lets it be Daisy’s decision to go back, even though she’s not convinced Daisy’s anywhere near ready to go to the darkness that inevitably awaits them in the Lighthouse. She knows Daisy needs the people that love her in order to heal, even if it meant facing everything that happened in the months leading up to Coulson’s death.

But Daisy’s nervous in a way that May can only remember her being before the fall of SHIELD.

The whole flight to base her knee bounces as her hands fidget. If this had been a few years ago, May would’ve probably used it as a teaching experience on how to cover up her nerves and use them to her advantage. But it wasn’t a few years ago and Daisy didn’t need a teacher, she just needed someone to be there for her and not push her.

So she sits next to her and ignores the fidgeting, letting her own knee rest against Daisy’s to remind her that she wasn’t alone.

It makes Daisy relax marginally, and she lets her weight shift until she’s leaning into May’s side, drawing whatever piece of comfort she can.

When the quinjet finally lands and the ramp lowers, the whole team is waiting at the foot of it, looking almost as nervous as Daisy.

Yet Daisy’s frozen on the ramp, the expression on her face making May worried that she’s going to turn tail and ask their pilot to take them back to the safe house. But then Elena’s face breaks out into a large grin and she closes the distance between them, wrapping Daisy in a hug before she can react.

It takes Daisy a second to melt into it, a teary smile appearing on her face as her arms came around to hold on tightly to Elena.

The sight makes May breathe a sigh of relief that she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. She can’t remember the last time she’d seen that smile on Daisy.

Sure, Daisy had smiled occasionally after things started making a turn around, but it’d always been marred by a kind of sadness that May couldn’t brush away with words or a hug.

The team falling apart had hurt Daisy in ways she couldn’t help with. _That_ was why she hadn’t put her foot down when it came to waiting longer to come back--she knew the only way Daisy would heal would be by getting the rest of her family back. Because she loved them, even with all that had happened.

And as she watches Fitz approach Daisy whilst being careful not to crowd her, his posture as purposefully non-threatening as it could be, any fears she had about Daisy coming back here fall away.

Because these people love Daisy just as much as Daisy loves them.

Because losing Coulson was a stark reminder that love was precious and fleeting, and needed to be held on to as securely as possible.

Because love might not fix everything, but it was a reminder that they weren’t alone in this dark, scary world.

**Author's Note:**

> been a long time since i posted a good ol' may & daisy fic, it feels good to be back! 
> 
> drop by the comments and let me know what you thought! i guarantee you'll make my day :)


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